wesleysgirl

(See tag for previous pts.)

Un-beta'd, no guarantees it will ever be finished (although I certainly hope it will be), probably riddled with errors including typos and problems with continuity. Read at your own risk!

Spike wakes up in the middle of the night to the sound of River whimpering. They're little soft sounds; she's like a terrified animal, unable to keep from making the noises even while knowing they're going to give her away. He waits, listening, for Simon's door to open, for the sound of Simon's voice to soothe away her fears.

But it doesn't come, and after another minute or so Spike gets up himself and moves quickly down the hallway to her room. "Pet?" he murmurs at the door, and his voice is strangely roughened. River gives another scared whimper.

He opens the door and goes inside.

She's curled up on the bed, face pressed to the wall, hands having gathered up two fistfuls of the blanket. At first it doesn't seem like she even knows he's there, not even when he sits on the bed and touches her shoulder.

"Pet?" he says again. "There, now. It's all right."

River turns her head and looks at him; her eyes are wide with fear, her lip curled slightly. "I hear them when I'm dreaming," she says. "In my head."

"Do you? And what do they say?" He shouldn't ask, but he can't help himself.

"They cry for the people they love. The ones they've lost. Their hands... their hands reach out to me, they want me to help them..." She starts to cry helplessly, and Spike strokes her hair. He knows how to do this.

"Hush, pet. It's just dreams. No one in there can hurt you."

She clings to him, cheek to his chest. It's not until he feels her tears, warm and wet on his skin, that he remembers he's not wearing a shirt. "I just want it to stop," she whispers, and he nods.

"I know. It will. Your brother'll sort it out, won't he? He's a smart one."

River relaxes against him after another few breaths. She's quiet enough that he wonders if she's gone off to sleep, but then she suddenly jerks away from him, sits upright. "He's coming. He knows."

Spike can't help but react to her panic. "Who knows?"

"Mal."

Next thing Spike hears is footsteps and shouting. It takes a second or two to sort out who it is, what's being said.

"How long have you known about this?" Mal, and angry as a buzzing bee by the sound of it.

Simon: "I just found out. Don't -- look, calm down. It's the middle of the night, can't we wait to talk about this in the --"

"No, we can't," Mal says. "Not with those two roaming the ship."

"They're sleeping," Simon tells him, just as Mal stalks past the River's quarters, stops, and comes back.

"Don't look like sleeping to me," Mal says, deadly calm, and points his gun at Spike's head.

"Mal!" Simon jerks at his arm. "River, come here." Of course his first instinct is to protect his sister, and Spike doesn't blame him for that.

"Go on, pet," Spike tells her, urging her onto her feet, and she hesitates, then scuttles through the doorway. Mal steps aside to give her room, then back into the place he'd been, still pointing the gun at Spike.

Getting shot won't kill him, but it'll hurt like hell. Spike would rather avoid it if he can.

"You stay right there," Mal says, then raises his voice. "Zoe! Where the hell are you?"

She's coming, if the quick footsteps are any indication. Mal must've got her up before. "Here, Sir," she says. Her hair's loose -- she must sleep with it like that -- but she doesn't look any less like a warrior, especially with the gun she's holding. "What's going on?"

"Why don't you ask the good doctor?" Mal says. He gestures at Spike. "Keep him here; I'm going to get Liam. If that's even his name."

"It is," Spike says. "One of them." Never can keep his mouth shut. He can hear Angel's door open, though, before Mal's even gone anywhere.

Mal turns, pointing his gun in Angel's direction. "Don't move."

"What's going on?" Angel asks, voice wary. Spike doesn't need to see the look on his face -- he can imagine it well enough.

"Simon tells me the two of you ain't what you seem," Mal says.

Spike shifts on the bed, and Zoe shifts her own weight, adding her second hand to the gun to steady it. She probably thinks she'll be standing there a while. "He's right. We're vampires."

"What? I must be dreaming, because I'd swear he just said vampires," Wash says. He must have followed along after Zoe.

"I told you not to tell him," River says to Simon.

Mal glares at her. "Well, I, for one, am glad he did, although I wish it'd been a mite sooner."

Looking back at Mal steadily, River says, "I told him you wouldn't understand."

"Understand that these two are crazy? Oh, I understand that just fine. I don't care what they think they are other than that. They can call themselves whatever they like."

"Will doesn't have a heartbeat." Simon's trying to sound calm, trying to reason with Mal, not that Spike's sure there's much point. "He doesn't breathe."

"Well then, he won't mind so much when we toss him out the hatch," Mal says.

"Sir?" Zoe doesn't seem to like that idea.

"I thought we'd agree that there would be voting before we killed people," Wash says.

"Simon tells me they're already dead, so I don't see how it'd be killing," Mal says.

"Since when do we believe in vampires?" Wash sounds so confused that Spike can't help but grin; Zoe doesn't seem to like that much, if the way her hand tightens on her gun's any indication.

Mal frowns. "We don't."

"Then why are there guns and threats?" Wash asks plaintively. "Is it just me, or is everyone acting crazy?"

"There's no need to get bent out of shape," Angel says from the hallway. "We can talk about this."

Bored with the way the conversation's starting to go, Spike stands up. "Or we could stop talking and get this over with," he says, and slips into game face. "There, you see? Vampire."

Wash mutters something in Chinese. Zoe and Mal both looked shocked, in a stoic sort of way -- soldier's a soldier for life -- but River is smiling. It's just a little smile, a secret smile. Simon looks from her to Spike and back again like he's not sure what to do or think.

"Okay," Wash says, taking a deep breath and letting it out slowly. "Now that's kind of freaky."

"You think?" Mal steps back and gestures with his gun toward River's room. "You, get in there with him."

There's a pause, then very faint footsteps as Angel pads barefoot down the hallway. He gets close to Mal, looking in through the doorway at Spike, then, at the last second, turns lightning-quick and snatches Mal's gun out of his hand, shoves him up against the wall with a hand at his throat and the gun pointed at his head.

Zoe tightens her finger on the trigger of her gun but doesn't know whether to keep pointing it at Spike or to turn it on Angel. She seems to decide Angel's the bigger threat. "Let him go."

"I could kill him," Angel says. "In a split second. And you shooting me isn't going to kill me."

"No?" Zoe says. "Let's find out." And she pulls the trigger.

The sound of the gun firing is surprisingly loud in the small space. Angel staggers but doesn't drop his -- Mal's -- gun; Spike takes advantage of Zoe's momentary distraction to leap forward and pluck hers from her hand.

"That's enough of that," he says. "No more shooting." Doesn't stop him from pointing it at Zoe's head, just to make his point. He won't shoot her unless he has to -- none of this is her fault, after all -- but he's pretty sure the threat of it'll shut everyone up.

Turns out he's wrong. Next thing he knows, everyone's talking at once, and Kaylee's there, too, eyes wide. "What's going on?"

"We seem to be having a little disagreement," Mal says. The fact that he can talk at all means Angel's hand's not as tight on his throat as it might have been.

"No," Kaylee says. "No disagreements. I don't like disagreements. Who shot Liam?"

Angel's blood's pattering down onto the floor.

"That would be me," Zoe says tightly.

"Can we all just put the guns down and talk about this like civilized people?" Wash asks.

"We're not the ones who started this," Angel says.

Spike sighs. "What are you, five? We've got to argue about who started it now?"

"She shot me," Angel tells him.

"Yeah, I know. I was here." Spike steps closer to Angel and holds out his free hand. "Come on, give it here."

"I'm not getting shot again," Angel says, but he obeys, handing Spike Mal's gun.

"Good," Wash says. "This is better. No shooting."

"Considering I'm the one who has to patch up the people the Captain shoots, I approve of that." Simon seems to be relaxing a little bit.

"Wasn't me did the shooting!" Mal protests.

"It might as well have been." Simon moves cautiously nearer to Angel. "Will you let me look at that?"

"It'll heal on its own," Angel says.

Simon frowns; he looks thoughtful more than anything else. Funny, that. Spike would have guessed he'd be freaking out about now. "Then why hasn't Will's...?" He gestures at his head.

"Different situation," Spike says. It's impossible to go into it here, standing in the hallway of this little, ramshackle ship as it hurtles through space.

Mal snorts.

Spike gives him a look. "What?"

"Well, I'm starting to see why someone bashed your head in, is all."

"You should talk," Spike says hotly. "Sneaking around behind your crew's back with --" But the look on Simon's face is horrified enough that he cuts himself off. "Mayhem on your mind," he finishes lamely.

"Wouldn't be the first time," Zoe says.

Kaylee's afraid; Spike can smell it coming off her like waves.

"Everyone should just calm down." Simon steps close enough to Angel to peel hand and shirt away from his bleeding shoulder, and Angel steps back and lets go of Mal. "Is there anything you need?" It's as diplomatic a way as Spike can imagine to ask what he's asking.

"Spike can get it," Angel says.

Spike frowns. "Spike's holding two guns just now," he says. "And referring to himself in the third person, apparently."

"I thought your name was Will," Mal says.

"It was, once," Spike says.

"It still is," River says suddenly. She's looking at him. "It's still who you are."

God, spare him mad, insightful women. "Right, well, let's save that argument for another time."

"It isn't an argument," River says.

"Can't you shut her up?" Angel growls, wincing away from Simon's touch. Mal gives Angel what might be the first look of agreement between them.

"She isn't hurting anyone." Simon speaks the words absently, like he's heard it all before and doesn't pay any attention to it now. "Will? Maybe you could go get what it is that Liam needs."

"I'm holding the guns," Spike reminds him. When did this all get so bollocksed up?

"Well, give one of them to Liam."

"His name's Angel," Spike says.

"You could give one of them to me," Mal suggests, and when everyone turns to give him a look, he says, "In the interest of fairness."

"None of you get guns," Angel says.

"How about if we put all the guns away and just talk?" Kaylee's voice quavers. "You know, talk?"

"You're the ones who've been pulling triggers," Spike points out. "Not that there haven't been times I wanted to shoot Angel here myself."

"No more shooting!" Wash protests. "Shooting bad. Bleeding bad. Someone's going to have to clean that up, you know, and it'll probably be me." He gestures at Angel's blood on the floor.

"All right, that's enough." Angel shoves Simon's hand away from him. "Spike, you're with me. The rest of you stay here." He starts walking down the hallway.

"You think they don't have more guns stashed all over the place?" Spike calls after him.

"They've been on the ship for days and days," Kaylee says to Mal. "They didn't hurt anyone."

"What do you think that proves?" Mal asks.

"If they wanted to hurt somebody, they could have done it a hundred times," Kaylee says. "While we were sleeping, even. Can't we give them the benefit of the doubt?"

Mal shifts his shoulders back and eyes Spike warily. "You a man of your word?"

"Not really," Spike says, and Angel comes back and whacks him in the shoulder with the back of one meaty hand. "Ow! What, I'm supposed to lie?"

"If it'll get this mess taken care of so I can go down to the cargo hold without having to worry about being shot again, yes," Angel says.

"Fine." Spike sighs and turns to Mal. "I give you my word we won't hurt anyone on this ship, all right? None of you." He gestures at Kaylee, who's looking a lot less scared now. "She's right. We could have killed you all in your sleep a dozen times over."

"Somehow I don't see how that's comforting," Mal says, but he nods and waves a hand at Angel. "Fine, go. But don't think we're not talking about this in the morning!"

"Yeah. And I'm sure you'll be sitting up all night with your gun in your lap." Spike throws a smirk in Simon's direction before he follows Angel and the path of blood droplets he's leaving in his wake.

TBC